Entering a New Era of Multimedia - Lehman College

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F A C U L T Y R E S E A R C H theory, Dr. McNeil and the two coauthors of her article concluded that the area’s forest cover actually increased during the years when the society was collapsing. The Classic Maya civilization was highly advanced and encompassed major portions of Mexico and Central America from about A.D. 200 until A.D. 900, 36 Lehman Today/Spring 2010 View of the Copan plaza. Photos by Cameron McNeil. when it collapsed and many of its cities were abandoned.Anthropologists have advanced various theories about that collapse, including war and drought, but until now deforestation has been viewed as an important factor. This hypothesis has been held up in both archaeological and high school textbooks, as well as in film and literature, as a lesson of the dangers of our own environmental abuses. Dr. McNeil’s finding refutes this popular view. Instead of responding to their growing population and larger urban centers by exhausting their natural resources, she suggests that these new data may signal that the Maya were implementing effective techniques of sustainable land use—even as serious problems were undermining the successful governance of Copan and the lives of its people. Addressing Vitamin A deficiency around the world Below: The tephra layer of the Ilopango eruption is composed of volcanic glass. This view of the tephra is magnified 400x. “This ARRA funding has created new jobs and is contributing to the translation of basic research into solutions for combating vitamin A deficiency around the globe,” Dr. Wurtzel said. Last year, she and two members of her team, Dr. Yu Chen and Dr. Faqiang Li, published their discovery that revises the biosynthetic pathway to provitamin A carotenoids. Finding a link between stress and certain ailments Studies show that chronic stress is a possible culprit in ailments ranging from cancer to heart conditions. New research by Dr. Luisa N. Borrell (Health Sciences) indicates that Americans with high levels of stress are 55 percent more likely to suffer from periodontitis—a gum disease that weakens the bone Dr. Luisa Borrell supporting the teeth. Mexican Americans are the most susceptible, almost five times more likely to have this condition. In addition to Mexican Americans, striking differences emerged in the study among men, blacks, those with fewer than twelve years of schooling, those who never visited a dentist, and current smokers. According to Dr. Borrell, who was the report’s lead coauthor, racial/ethnic minorities and low socioeconomic groups are more likely to be exposed to stress, which may explain their higher prevalence of periodontitis. “Strong associations between stress and periodontitis were observed for Mexican Americans, who normally have a lower incidence of this disease,” she notes. “This may mean they have not adopted coping responses to process chronic stressors that other groups may have historically been conditioned to handle.” Mexican Americans constitute the largest Hispanic subgroup in the U.S. Dr. Borrell conducted the study with her colleague, Professor Natalie D. Crawford of the Columbia University School of Public Health. It was published as an Online First in the December 2009 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Learning more about the causes of mental retardation Vitamin A deficiency is the cause of eye disease in millions of children and places hundreds of millions at risk for other disorders. Maize is the Research by Professor Manfred Philipp most common crop grown in much of sub-Saha- (Chemistry) is shedding new light on the ran Africa and the Americas, where substantial functioning of the gene historically associated numbers are affected by this deficiency. Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel (Biological Sciences) received with mental retardation. funding last year from the National Institutes The research was conducted by Dr. Philipp of Health through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for her research on Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel and colleagues at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Dr. Manfred Philipp improving provitamin A carotenoid levels in food staples like corn. Disabilities on Staten Island. They found that mutations in this gene disrupt its ability to maintain the correct balance of steroids, doom- Dr. Wurtzel heads a team of researchers that includes undergraduing the brain to neurological problems later in life. Until now, it has ates, graduate students in the CUNY biology and biochemistry not been clear exactly how or why this gene is required for normal Ph.D. programs, postdoctoral students, and other visiting scientists. They work together to conduct research on corn grown on brain development. the Lehman campus to better understand the basis of the natural The research was published in Proceedings of the National diversity found in this plant and how carotenoid content and composition are controlled. Academy of Sciences.
Developing revolutionary computational tools Dr. Nancy Griffeth (Mathematics and Computer Science) is part of a national team of mathematicians and computer scientists working on a $10 million project that promises to advance science on many fronts, from developing new cancer treatments to designing safer aircraft. She is working with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, New York University, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop revolutionary computational tools to help scientists and engineers. The five-year project was funded last August by the National Science Foundation and is expected to be far-reaching in its impact. The researchers plan to combine “Model Checking” and “Abstract Interpretation,” two independently developed techniques that have found errors in systems used to control satellites, railway systems, and other computer circuitry and software. In related research, Dr. Griffeth has studied how to test and manage computer networks. For the new project, she will examine how computers can learn to create models of a system from observations of its behavior. The computer-generated models can then be used to help scientists determine the properties of the system. The project team believes that combining the techniques of Model Checking and Abstract Interpretation can provide insights into other complex systems, regardless of whether they are biological or electronic. The team’s findings could benefit pancreatic-cancer modeling, atrial-fibrillation detection, distributed automotive control, and aerospace control software, among other areas. As part of the grant, Dr. Griffeth is organizing a yearly undergraduate workshop on modeling complex systems. Locating acres of unused land that could make our region greener Even in densely populated New York City and its surrounding area, there are thousands of acres of vacant land that could be saved for conservation, according to a report by Dr. Yuri Gorokhovich (Environmental, Geographic, and Geological Sciences). He studied the counties bordering Long Island Sound for two years and published his findings in the December 2009 issue of The Journal of Coastal Conservation. Dr. Nancy Griffeth Dr. Yuri Gorokhovich Dr. Gorokhovich identified 744 individual parcels of vacant land, at least five acres in size, that could be set aside for conservation. In addition, he mapped out 122 contiguous clusters of vacant land—some 14,661 acres in total—in five counties: Westchester (246 acres), the Bronx (247 acres), Queens (1,246 acres), Nassau (2,036 acres), and Suffolk (10,885). Each land cluster, he says, could be used to make New York City and Long Island greener. The report has been submitted to both the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Long Island Sound Study, a cooperative effort created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the states of Connecticut and New York to protect and improve the health of the Sound. Funding in Millions External Funding in 2009 $25 $20 $15 $10 $5 $0 $8.4 $10.2 $10.1 From 1999 to 2009, Lehman College received $164.9 million in external funding for both research and sponsored programs. Here’s a sampling of grants from various sources that Lehman received in Fiscal Year 2009 (July 1, 2008 – June 30, 2009). Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Bronx Early College Academy ($138,674) Hospital League, Local 1199: MSN Program ($237,818) National Institutes of Health • A Periplasmic Global Regulator, ExoR, for Bacterial Invasion of Host Cells ($122,250); • Active Antidiabetic Compounds of Dominican Medical Plant Momordica charantia ($26,656); • Mechanisms of Obesity-Induced Sympathetic Activation ($241,310); • Regulation of Provitamin A Carotenoid Biosynthesis in Maize–SCORE ($335,250) • Cognitive Flexibility and Parenting: Parent and Child Correlates ($122,250) • Efficacy of Language Treatment in Monolingual and Bilingual Chronic Aphasia ($285,250) National Science Foundation • Justification Logic and Applications ($107,313); • Mathematics Teacher Transformation Institute ($1,786,870); • Theory of Nanomagnets ($74,000) NYC Department of Education: • NYC Mathematics Project ($381,953) • Teaching Fellows Program ($563,146) Lehman College External Funding 1999-2009* $14.9 $15.3 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 *CUNY Research Foundation Fiscal Year: July 1 - June 30 New York State Education Department: Science and Technology Entry Program ($212,049) Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors: Expanding Diversity Among the Nurse Workforce: A Collaborative (EDAN) ($100,000) U.S. Department of Education • Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs: South Bronx GEAR-UP ($2,378,084); Bronx Institute GEAR-UP Network ($2,719,200) • Upward Bound: Pathways to College Success ($295,520); • Lehman College Educational Talent Search–Pathways to College ($500,000); • Title V – Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions ($575,000) $16.3 $17.1 $19.1 $17.1 $17.6 $18.8 Lehman Today/Spring 2010 37
Page 1 and 2: Lehman TODAY SPRING 2010 Preparing
Page 3 and 4: A message from President Ricardo R.
Page 5 and 6: The Winter of Our (Political) Disco
Page 7 and 8: Gabourey Sidibe’s Lehman Connecti
Page 9 and 10: ookshelf Guadalupe in New York: Dev
Page 11 and 12: Preparing the Teacher of the Twenty
Page 13 and 14: Vanessa Vásquez (‘08, M.S.Ed.) h
Page 15 and 16: Jaivelle Reed (‘09, M.S.Ed.) is a
Page 17 and 18: Professor Charlotte Morgan-Cato: A
Page 19 and 20: Multimedia B-21 Auddy Matos (left)
Page 21 and 22: Clockwise from top: Professor Micha
Page 23 and 24: The vintage photographs date from t
Page 25 and 26: Jean Romulus (right), whose parents
Page 27 and 28: Job Incubator however, as a 2009 Wo
Page 29 and 30: Jacqueline Bishop ‘94 To Lehman,
Page 31 and 32: 1973 Dr. Steven Ackerman (B.A.) del
Page 33 and 34: The President’s Report, 2009 A Ye
Page 35 and 36: October For the second year in a ro
Page 37: F A C U L T Y R E S E A R C H Lehma
Page 41 and 42: Exploring the use of plants to clea
Page 43 and 44: Celebrate a graduation, highlight a

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